The Challenge

A leading luxury hotel brand was facing a decline in search revenue year-over-year despite strong ROAS goals. Rising branded keyword costs forced a disproportionate share of spend toward branded campaigns, leaving unbranded campaigns underfunded. While branded searches drove efficient returns, the brand was losing incremental revenue opportunities by not capturing new customers through unbranded demand.

The Insight

The issue was not search demand, but measurement and allocation. A last-click attribution model undervalued the role of unbranded campaigns in driving awareness and top-of-funnel engagement. This skewed spend toward branded terms and constrained the brand’s ability to fuel long-term growth.

The Strategy

I shifted the account’s approach from a narrow, last-click ROAS model to a holistic, full-funnel attribution strategy. The goal was twofold:

1. Reduce branded campaign inefficiency by optimizing bidding policies.

2. Reinvest savings into unbranded campaigns to capture incremental revenue and grow the customer base.

The Execution

• Attribution: Implemented Data-Driven Attribution (DDA) across the account to better capture the impact of unbranded campaigns on conversions.

• Bidding: Introduced a ROAS-based bidding policy in SA360 for both branded and unbranded campaigns, aligning spend with true conversion value.

• Optimization: Reallocated budget freed from branded inefficiencies into underfunded unbranded campaigns, expanding reach at the top of the funnel.

The Results

The attribution shift transformed performance:

• Reduced branded campaign costs by 52%

• Unlocked budget for unbranded campaigns without lowering ROAS efficiency

• Drove +65% YoY revenue growth in January through rebalanced funnel investment

The Takeaway

This case illustrates how attribution strategy can directly unlock growth. By reframing success metrics and optimizing bidding policies, I helped a luxury hotel brand both protect efficiency and expand incremental revenue opportunities—proving that the right measurement model can be as powerful as the campaigns themselves.